There is a rising number of children who navigate through their lives from a combination of senses: the sense of hearing and the sense of touch.
An website about Deaf-Blind children shows of an increase of cochlear implantation in children with deaf-blindness in the state of Texas from the years 2002 to 2005 alone. Click here to go to the full article.
3 comments:
i'm an ASL-CI user with Usher's, and i can tell you that it is a huge benefit for people with vision loss. it's not even about being able to understand speech just by listening (which is the ultimate point of the CI) but about hearing what is going on around you.
for example, i'm teaching in a classroom, and my CI tells me so much about what's going on around me that I can't see. examples: kids screaming, the bell ringing (i can't see the light bulb for the bell sometimes), pens tapping, desks shaking, doors closing/opening so i know if a student just ran outside, and so on. it's really a huge aid in my education profession.
so i'm not surprised at all that the rate of CI implantation in DB children has skyrocketed. however, how does it compare with the rate of CI implantation in sighted, deaf children?
That's a good question, Adam. We were wondering the same thing. There are different researches related to rates of CI implantation, but many are limited to country, region, or states. We are aware that Denmark and Australia have already collected CI statistics. Many CI Corporations have the stats/number of people receiving their model but it doesn't exactly help us figure out how many of them are children.
Hopefully someone who knows where to find information on this particular topic will see this blog and answer the question.
Adam, if you do research about this and have found some answers, please do share with us!
My son Noah is deaf-blind and has a CI. It has done wonders for him! We really struggled with the decision to go with a CI and while we weren't discouraged from having the CI surgery, we were encouraged to not get our hopes up in terms of outcomes. They thought that maybe he would get some environmental sounds or a little speech, but he has far exceeded that.
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